Doctor who special moves to New year for annual adventure

TURKEY, paper crowns and mince pies are all something you’d expect to see on Christmas Day. It probably wouldn’t be the same without them.

But this year, another festive staple will be missing from the seasonal line-up as Doctor Who will not be on television on Christmas Day.

For the first time since the reboot in 2005, we won’t hear the whooshing of the Tardis after we’ve tucked into a Christmas dinner, and there’ll be no Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor darting around the screen with a sonic screwdriver.

However, the Timelord (or Timelady?) will have an hour-long special which runs at New Year instead, and it’s said to have a storyline that relates to the arrival of 2019, according to the Mirror.

The move comes after bosses claimed they had “run out” of festive storylines following 13 years of making them.

The decision to shift the special from Christmas to New Year came from showrunner Chris Chibnall, who confirmed this summer that an “11th episode” was being made for the BBC while attending Comic Con in San Diego .

“We seem to be filming 11 episodes, and it’s only a series of 10,” he said.

Carefully not using the word Christmas, he added: “I would definitely think there’s another episode after the end of the series.”

Chibnall’s predecessor Steven Moffat had suggested the slot was a huge headache after more than a decade of festive stories.

These have included killer snowmen, evil robot Santas, a sleigh pulled by flying sharks and even homicidal angels aboard the Titanic.

“I sort of think we might have mined, and possibly over mined, every single thing we could about Christmas in Doctor Who and the last time we more or less ignored it.”

His final special last year saw the regeneration of Peter Capaldi into Whittaker, as well as bringing David Bradley in to play the First Doctor.

One source said: “BBC bosses have already made the bold move of shifting the entire series from Saturday to Sunday nights so they won’t be scared about moving the festive special from Christmas to New Year.”

But there’s more bad news for Who fans. The episode is likely to be the only outing for Doctor Who next year, with fans facing a “gap year” until 2020.

Filming on Jodie’s second series has been pushed back to early next year, meaning the series is unlikely to be finished in time to air in the autumn.

The hour-long special has been a stalwart of the BBC’s Christmas Day schedule ever since the sci-fi hit returned to screens in 2005.